Kendal Oral History Group aims to compile a picture of earlier times through interviews recording memories of the area’s older residents. Mrs Dodgson was the oldest person interviewed. She was born in 1888 and was interviewed when she was 100 years old.

MY SISTER was the dressmaker, she could make clothes. Even when I went to Ripon all I had on was made by my sister.

I remember a dress. I don’t know whether jumpers and skirts weren’t in fashion then. It was a full length dress.

Elsie made them I remember, then because when you came down stone steps they trailed on the steps.

Everybody wore long, all the females, you could tuck them up but they were made long.

She couldn’t make for the boys except when they were little. When they were men they had to go to the tailor in Kirkby Lonsdale for a suit which would last for a long time.

Sedbergh was our shoe shop - clogs were very popular wear. We went to school in clogs.

It was special to go to Kendal for anything. My mother would take a shipping order for sheets or blankets for the year and go to Musgroves and buy the sheets that had been folded for years, and that had got yellow along the edges and bring home enough to fill a cartload.

My father would meet the train at the station to bring all these sale bargains home. If it was from Kendal it was very special. You could buy hats and frocks there for we two younger girls when there was a sale on.

We used to run up the main road to meet the shopper to see what sort of hat they’d brought.

If you wanted to go to the station for mother’s shopping you had to take the horse and cart to get it. It wasn’t a trotting horse. We hadn’t one that would take you quickly.

I couldn’t tell you how old I was before I saw a car.

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